PLEASE ship your letters (as brief as you want) to information@conservativewoman.co.uk and mark them ‘for doable publication’. We want your identify and if doable, a county handle, eg Yorkshire or London. We’ll embody biographical particulars in the event you volunteer them. Letters could also be shortened.
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Conservatives? Don’t make me snicker
Pricey Editor
The Conservative Social gathering should be having fun placing these neocons ahead for Prime Minister – Javid who injected youngsters when Hancock refused, Zahawi who allowed them to do it in faculties, Sunak who has the best tax in 60 years and Truss who virtually offered out Northern Eire. How do any of them inform the general public they’ve conservative values with a straight face?
We’ve had a Conservative authorities for 12 years and what conservative insurance policies have they got to point out for it?
L Murphy
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Tory members, not MPs, ought to resolve the management
Pricey Editor
I bear in mind when a brand new Tory Chief ‘emerged’ after the nice and the nice of the celebration met in a smoke-filled room. This was how Sir Alec Douglas-Dwelling turned chief in 1963. He wasn’t even an MP on the time; he was a member of the Home of Lords. He needed to battle and win a by-election in Scotland to be within the Home of Commons. You wouldn’t see that taking place at present.
Sir Alec Douglas-Dwelling was the final one to emerge on this method. From 1965 the management was determined by a vote of Tory MPs.
It was not till 2001 that Tory celebration members have been allowed to decide between two last candidates, offered to them by the MPs.
However the Tory Social gathering urgently must go one additional step in direction of democracy. Social gathering members solely ought to resolve who their chief is.
They shouldn’t be offered with a short-list of simply two, which may be manipulated by the MPs, so the celebration members, for instance, could possibly be given a alternative between two left-wingers when they need a right-winger as chief.
There are additionally at all times allegations {that a} candidate main within the MPs’ vote ‘lends’ one other candidate some votes to maintain them within the race, as a result of that different candidate can be simpler for the entrance runner to beat within the run-off with the celebration members.
In 2017 the Canadian Conservative Social gathering had THIRTEEN candidates to be chief and that was determined solely by the celebration members.
In America, the celebration chief is the presidential candidate in all however identify. They’re elected in major or caucus votes of celebration supporters throughout the person States.
Conservative Social gathering members ought to insist that the system is modified for the following management race, which on previous report is simply three years away.
Brian Silvester
Former Tory councillor
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Why Kemi Badenoch is the girl for the job
Pricey Editor
On the time of writing, the most recent spherical of the Conservative management election sees the previous Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak because the entrance runner. It’s to be anticipated that his identify along with one of many remaining 4 candidates within the race, Liz Truss, Penny Mordaunt, Tom Tugendhat and Kemi Badenoch shall be submitted to membership to be the brand new chief of the celebration and Prime Minister.
If solely Conservative MPs might grasp the nettle and supply what true Conservative voters are crying out for: an precise conservative who will present the nation with the core values of low tax, mild intervention, private accountability, residing inside one’s means and pleasure in a single’s nation. Extra importantly, someone voters can belief, with integrity and competence. A contemporary face is desperately wanted and that individual is Kemi Badenoch.
Regardless of her relative political inexperience, she has proven the braveness of her convictions. She is able to stand as much as the pernicious tradition warriors and understands that the quiet majority on this nation have had sufficient of listening to their historical past and heritage regularly run down, of cancel tradition and the erosion of free speech, of tax hikes, and loony, unrealistic inexperienced targets while driving up gas costs, of continued, unfettered unlawful immigration pressurising native infrastructure and social cohesion, of their youngsters’s schooling being within the palms of Marxist educating unions topic to the corrosive gender-identity mania which is destroying childhood safety and household life.
Conservative MPs will need to have the wit to know that the nation doesn’t want extra of the identical. If they don’t, they are going to render this nation to a rag-bag coalition of left-wing events manipulated by the First Minister of Scotland, and see the demise of the UK.
That is crucial management election of a era. Solely Kemi Badenoch can present the nationwide cohesion this nation so desperately wants.
A former Tory voter
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The forgotten areas of Britain
Pricey Editor
Why not enable the areas of the UK to carry referenda?
Switzerland with a inhabitants of 8million holds common referenda. All residents really feel concerned.
UK has a inhabitants of 68 million (all figures rounded down). One referendum in 2016.
The UK has an issue in that the areas have been given devolved standing by Blair they usually assume that they’re autonomous. Their breakdown is:
England – 55million
Scotland – 5million
Wales – 3million
Northern Eire – 1.8million
Sadly, this distribution of powers may be very closely in favour of the minor areas. Nonetheless, Yorkshire has a inhabitants of 5.5million – considerably increased, and richer, than any of the devolved areas – but we’ve no-one talking for us. We signify 10 per cent of the inhabitants and pay our taxes however don’t get 10 per cent of the GDP in return – it appears extra essential to assist London and the South-East. It has been argued that Westminster speaks for England, nevertheless it doesn’t. English MPs haven’t any say in what occurs to schooling, well being, and many others, in Scotland or NI. If members of the SNP within the Home of Commons can talk about and vote on purely English laws, Westminster is patently not consultant of English areas.
I’ve spoken on behalf of Yorkshire. I consider that Cornwall has an equal or higher argument for devolution of the English areas: they’ve nonetheless a spoken language; they’re as far (time of driving and distance) from London as we’re.
We in Yorkshire are descendants from the Angles and Saxons (plus just a few unlawful immigrants who have been shipwrecked from the Spanish Armada alongside the northern coasts). We’re hybrids. Cornwall’s unique inhabitants was primarily based on the Celts, individuals who fled from the Roman invasion. It’s a uncared for space because the lack of the tin mines. It has a inhabitants of half 1,000,000. Neighbouring Devon has a inhabitants of 1.8million and growing. If the 2 counties put their heads collectively they might out-vote NI, and have a GDP increased than Scotland.
I’ve by no means understood why Blair determined to hive off the intense areas (who won’t ever be self-supporting) and grant them self-governing powers, supported by subsidies from the English tax-payers, which they’ve squandered, while leaving the extra populous and hard-working areas beneath the direct management of Westminster.
My want can be to divide England into ten counties of roughly 5.5million electors (London must be cut up into two), which might all be immediately accountable to their voters in referenda on any essential difficulty. Our elected politicians can be native and instantly accessible, not 200 miles away and chosen by HQ quite than folks with native information.
Judith
North Yorkshire
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Eco-activists are frequent criminals
Pricey Editor
Final week eco-activists from Tyre Extinguishers deflated the tyres of 45 SUVs in Edinburgh. They’ve carried out this on 5 earlier events. The group’s Amy Kidd threatened SUV house owners to not come to Edinburgh. Why have the police not charged her? The police and judiciary should take draconian motion towards eco-demonstrators who’re severely disrupting civilised society. As an alternative cops dance and skateboard with demonstrators, and if they’ve glued themselves to roads or railings the police ask in the event that they are comfy. That shouldn’t be what we pay the police to do. Anarchist teams Extinction Riot, Insulate Britain, Simply Cease Oil and Tyre Extinguishers ought to be banned. The UK police and courts are far too lenient on these eco-terrorists. These demonstrators are usually not eco-warriors however eco-cowards since they don’t go to the oil-rich Arab nations or America which has 33million SUVs with house owners who’ve weapons. The UK police ought to undertake the French methodology of coping with eco-terrorists glued to the roads by eradicating them with out utilizing solvent.
Clark Cross
Linlithgow
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NHS suppliers and their captive market
Pricey Editor
Studying Ian Ashworth-Kirkham’s TCW piece on tackling the NHS, I used to be struck by the truth that among the many glorious solutions on profligate spending, one dimension was absent: suppliers nakedly overcharging. In a former life I used to be a senior anatomical pathology technician and principal amongst my duties was conducting major dissection for post-mortem. Most NHS hospitals embody a autopsy suite and it’ll conduct someplace between ten and twenty autopsies weekly, typically kind of relying on native components. Every of these procedures makes use of a minimal of 1 specialised blade referred to as a PM40. Like a few of my colleagues, I maintained a ‘area package’ of fundamental devices to allow work off-site; I used to be answerable for offering this myself, purely voluntarily; of necessity it included two PM40 knives. Substitute blades are non-sterile and provided in packs of ten. I nonetheless use one knife at house for varied home functions (none of which relate to Hannibal Lecter); lately I used my final blade and went on-line with an eye fixed to changing it, anticipating to pay round £20-£25. Think about my horror on seeing that my regular suppliers have been pricing £102 per pack of ten. Evidently I’m looking for another, however the NHS and native authority mortuaries are very a lot a captive market, and if that value is indicative of a pattern amongst specialised suppliers then the taxpayer is definitely being skinned (no pun supposed).
Mac McCubbin
Former SAPT East Kent NHS Belief
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Vote for RoN
Pricey Editor
I counsel an innovation in voting that I consider would considerably enhance democratic illustration and the calibre of these elected to public workplace. This could be for `Re-open Nominations’ (RoN) to be an choice on poll papers for all elections to public workplace: Parliament, Councils, Mayors, Police and Crime Commissioners, and many others.
A vote to `Re-open Nominations’ would maintain the identical weight as a vote for a candidate. If `RoN’ gained extra votes than any candidate, no candidate can be elected, and the election can be re-run after an appropriate interval for brand new nominations and campaigning, say 5 weeks. This concept shouldn’t be new; it applies to elections in lots of college College students’ Unions.
There are two main benefits. First, it supplies a significant solution to specific dissatisfaction with any or the entire candidates. The present choices of both not voting, or spoiling one’s poll paper, which is then not counted, don’t have an effect on the end result of the vote, besides to decrease the turnout. A protest vote requires a constituent to vote for somebody they won’t want to elect. The most recent native elections have been a living proof. Thus we’d anticipate considerably larger political engagement by the general public.
From this follows the second main benefit, that elected representatives must be sufficiently diligent of their work for his or her constituents to keep away from being ‘unelected’. A candidate who alienated adequate of the voters throughout his or her time period of workplace would possibly anticipate to be unseated with out the need of an opposing candidate. If this occurred, it might point out that the voters needed a change, and would possibly thus encourage unbiased or in any other case new candidates to face for election who won’t have thought that that they had a sensible probability of profitable.
An extra benefit is that, not like the assorted types of proportional illustration or transferable votes, this method doesn’t require main adjustments to electoral constructions, and is simple to know.
One objection is that this might depart the nation (or city, borough, and many others.) with out a governing physique on the finish of the election, within the occasion that adequate portions of votes for `RoN’ have been polled in sufficient constituencies. This could be merely an extension of the hiatus that happens as soon as Parliament is dissolved, and the provisions that govern this era would apply. One other objection can be the expense of repeating elections; this is able to be negligible in comparison with the benefits, and within the occasion that `RoN’ received could be offset barely by all candidates dropping their deposits. A moot level can be whether or not to permit a vote for `RoN’ in a re-run election. That, nonetheless, is a element.
The failure of the Opposition to carry the present Authorities to account, particularly over the imposition of lock-downs, demonstrates that our electoral system can not proceed as it’s.
Edmund Sutton
